In a single day, both The New York Times and CBS News suspended top journalists in the wake of sexual-harassment allegations, and
The Process of Reporting
Los Angeles Times, editorial: “Say a congressional staffer wants to report that her supervisor has repeatedly made lewd comments and touched her inappropriately. She better have a lot of patience. … She will have had to wait three months — at least — from the time of the incident before being allowed to lodge a formal complaint, all the while continuing to work in the same potentially hostile workplace, possibly alongside the person who harassed her in the first place. Only then can she move on to the second stage of the process, which may be just as extended as the first. … Let’s hope lawmakers use this moment to set an example by fighting sexual harassment, not suppressing the people who want to report it.”
Jenny Beth Martin, The Hill: “In defense of Congress, the reasoning behind this rather convoluted dispute resolution process was that there could be scurrilous political operatives trying … to target political opponents with potentially career-ending sexual harassment claims. That is a reasonable concern. But in the process of establishing protections for its members, Congress inadvertently institutionalized a coverup culture, in which the supreme end goal is to get the alleged victims to go away quietly.”
The Weekly Standard, editorial: “We don’t doubt these women’s stories for a moment. What we do doubt is the likelihood that mandatory sexual harassment training seminars … will make any sort of change for the better. The problem is not that these men don’t know any better; the problem is that they believe they can act in reprehensible ways without consequence. And they face little accountability because it’s far easier for their victims to keep quiet than to risk reprisal and public disparagement by speaking openly about what they’ve experienced. … A law could force perpetrators to pay these settlements out of their office funds. In cases decided in the plaintiff’s favor, moreover, the amounts paid and the nature of the offenses should be made public. Indeed, we would suggest requiring members to pay settlements out of their personal bank accounts (excluding campaign accounts).”
Democrats moved a step closer to losing one of their most vocal advocates in the Senate, who is facing similar accusations. The post-Weinstein reckoning has torn through the ranks of the entertainment and media industries at an unprecedented pace, bringing long-simmering rumors to the surface and exposing abusers at every level. And with the allegations against Alabama Senate Candidate Roy Moore as a catalyst, it was inevitable that it would soon reach Capitol Hill, the Valhalla of the power hungry.
In recent weeks, women in Congress have begun to speak up on the subject of workplace sexual harassment. “Many of us in Congress know what it’s like, because Congress has been a breeding ground for a hostile work environment for far too long,” Rep. Jackie Speier said in calling for an overhaul of the Hill’s policies. And suddenly, that long history of abuse seems on the verge of being exposed. A bombshell BuzzFeed News report, published Monday, hints at the full, staggering extent of the problem—and Washington’s attempts to sweep it under the rug.
When staffers experience inappropriate behavior in their offices of employment, their only recourse for lodging a complaint is Congress’s Office of Compliance—as one ex-staffer put it to Politico, “You don’t have an H.R.
Department on the Hill.” But BuzzFeed’s report, which alleges that John Conyers, one of the highest ranking Democrats in the House of Representatives, settled a sexual-harassment claim filed by a former staffer, describes what it calls “a grinding, closely held process” that leaves alleged victims feeling stonewalled.
The staffer, who BuzzFeed did not name, charged that Conyers fired her for “refusing his sexual advances.” (Conyers did not admit fault as part of the settlement ) And when she brought the matter to the O.O.C., she faced a process so byzantine and secretive that it was seemingly designed to keep her from going public:
Congress has no human resources department. Instead, congressional employees have 180 days to report a sexual-harassment incident to the Office of Compliance, which then leads to a lengthy process that involves counseling and mediation, and requires signing of a confidentiality agreement before a complaint can go forward . . . after this an employee can choose to take the matter to federal district court, but another avenue is available: an administrative hearing, after which a negotiation and settlement may follow.
In this case, [the staffer] was offered a settlement, in exchange for her silence, that would be paid out of Conyers’s taxpayer-funded office budget. His office would “rehire” the woman as a “temporary employee” despite her being directed not to come into the office or do any actual work, according to the document. The complainant would receive a total payment of $27,111.75 over the three months, after which point she would be removed from the payroll, according to the document.
Though several additional staffers corroborated the woman’s account and said that Conyers acted similarly around other women, and two even told the O.O.C. that they believed Conyers had used congressional resources to carry out extramarital affairs, the O.O.C. did not reprimand him. “It is a designed cover-up,” said law clerk Matthew Peterson,who represented the staffer during the complaint process. “You feel like they were betrayed by their government just for coming forward. It’s like being abused twice.”
In the past week, documents released by the office have shown that the O.O.C. has paid out over $17.2 million in taxpayer money over the course of 20 years to cover 268 settlements on Capitol Hill, including sexual-harassment allegations. Conyers’s settlement did not come from that designated fund, but already the documents have sparked speculation as to what other cases have passed through the office. And even those cases reportedly represent just a small fraction of incidents that occur on Capitol Hill—Speier told CNN last week that 80 percent of the people who came to her office with stories of harassment in the past few weeks had chosen not to report the incidents to the O.O.C.
In a statement, Conyers acknowleged that he had settled the complaint, but “expressly and vehemently” denied the contents of the allegations. “My office resolved the allegations — with an express denial of liability — to save all involved from the rigors of protracted litigation. That should not be lost in the narrative,” he said. (The statement did not deter Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi from calling for an ethics probe into the allegations, though she had previously denied knowing about the settlement.)
The wave of stories is cresting outside Washington as well, with a handful of lawmakers in state capitols facing similar allegations. California Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra has been accused by six women of making unwanted sexual advances (Bocanegra has said he will resign his seat at the end of the session in September and that he has suspended his reelection campaign); Florida State Senator Jack Latvala, who is running for governor, faces allegations of inappropriately touching six women (Latvala has denied the charges); and the Florida Democratic Party Chairman Stephen Bittel resigned last week over charges that he had created a hostile work environment for both male and female staffers—“I apologize for all who have felt uncomfortable during my tenure at the Democratic Party,” Bittel said in a statement. But according to Axios’s Mike Allen, this is just the beginning. Allen has received tips that various reporters are “looking into specific congressmen” with spotty reputations, he wrote. “Every sign is that for the East Coast, there’s lots more to come..
– t nugyen